20 Florins / 2 Pounds - George V

The East African Currency Board was established in 1919 specifically to replace the rupee-based system that had governed British East Africa since the 1890s. This note belongs to the transitional series that introduced the florin as the new unit — a short-lived experiment, since the florin-based system itself was abandoned within a few years in favor of the East African shilling.

The dual denomination — florins on one face, pounds on the other — reflects the awkward arithmetic of the conversion: 10 florins to the pound, a ratio that never sat comfortably with a public accustomed to rupees. Bradbury Wilkinson produced the series in London; their intaglio work on colonial currency of this period is consistently fine.

Pick 11 is among the scarcer pieces in the EACB sequence, with surviving examples almost exclusively in collector hands rather than having passed through normal trade circulation.